Romneycare shadows Scott Brown’s anti-Obamacare tour

The former Massachusetts senator, now running in New Hampshire, has become a walking megaphone of anti-Obamacare rhetoric. He calls the health law a “disaster,” a “fiasco,” a “government takeover” and a regulatory “tsunami” that will overwhelm the state’s businesses, its medical device industry, its ski resorts.

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Inside POLITICO: Covering Brown's ACA evolution

Scott Brown visits workers at Secure Care.

Yet for all the vitriol, Brown may not be the purest critic. Obamacare is an offshoot of Romneycare, which Brown supported as a Republican state lawmaker in Massachusetts. That gives Brown the same problem Mitt Romney had while running for president in 2012: explaining why he likes and still defends a health reform law packed with mandates in Massachusetts while declaring its central elements unfit for the nation.

Brown insisted in an interview that although Obamacare is “the biggest issue in New Hampshire” he is not taking health care cues from Romney.

“He’s not told me anything,” he said. “I haven’t talked to anybody about it. I understand the issues and do my own research.”

Yet Brown is not reticent about enlisting Romney to make his case, including a fundraising appeal highlighting the very topic that confounded Romney’s own candidacy.

“The only way to get rid of Obamacare once and for all is to get rid of the Obamacare Democrats who forced it upon the American people in the first place … starting with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen,” Romney wrote on Brown’s behalf.

No candidate’s political identity is more intertwined with Obamacare than Scott Brown’s. His ongoing praise for Romneycare and condemnation of Obamacare is the conundrum of his unusual bid to unseat Democrat Shaheen and become the first person to represent two states in the Senate since 1879.

Opposition to President Barack Obama’s health law worked for Brown — once. It propelled him from the backbenches of the Massachusetts State Senate to Washington in 2010. Less than three years later, he was voted out.

It was arguably easier to attack the federal version of the law when Massachusetts already had a state-based program to cover its own people. It may be harder to finesse as Brown transplants himself to New Hampshire, where enrollment in Obamacare exceeded goals. More than 40,000 people signed up, including 31,000 with subsidies, and the GOP-led state Senate recently joined Democrats to expand Medicaid, covering more low-income people in the state by embracing a key piece of the federal health law.

Shaheen, like many of the vulnerable Democrats up for reelection in November, has been reticent about Obamacare. But she said in an interview outside the Senate chamber this week that “successes” are emerging. “I think people are beginning to see the changes the health care law has made,” she said, while again pledging to keep addressing its flaws.

There are, of course, plenty of voters in New Hampshire who oppose the president’s health law fiercely, and Brown barreled into the state promising to be their champion. One health insurer dominates the exchange, he notes, and there’s been a particular outcry here from people who can’t see the doctor they are used to, or go to the nearest hospital without incurring extra costs. And there were those politically toxic canceled health plans.

Brown hammers on those points on his tour, and he spends most of his stump speech slamming the law and the ills he says it has wrought on New Hampshire. He makes passing mentions of high energy costs and emphasizes his “long and strong ties” to New Hampshire. But he repeatedly returns to the harm of Obamacare — and he lays the blame in Shaheen’s lap.

“She’s the deciding vote on Obamacare, along with all the other Democrats that rammed it through Congress,” Brown said on his tour stop.“Since when does the federal government tell us what to do and how to do it? That’s not what we believe in here, that’s not what I believe in.”

Shaheen has been talking about small businesses, jobs and veterans more than the Affordable Care Act. Her campaign notes her support for the health law but emphasizes her efforts to “improve” it, a staple for embattled Democrats. Lately though, she’s beginning to describe more bright spots, including robust enrollment numbers. She also said as many as five insurers are thinking about joining New Hampshire’s exchange next year, undercutting Brown’s argument about a lack of competition.

She also pounced on Brown’s role in passing Massachusetts’s health care law, accusing him of having “changed his mind” on policies he supported as a state senator. “I don’t know where Scott Brown’s been, ” she said. “There are fixes that we need to make but the answer is not to repeal the law.”

For his part, Brown says he’s not conflicted about his health record.

“I have no challenge. I’m very clear. I know what I did. I know how I voted,” he said in the interview. “We addressed a situation in Massachusetts that everybody worked on together … That’s not what the federal plan did. And we didn’t raise taxes, and we didn’t cut Medicare.”

Polls show Shaheen leading by a few points, but it’s early and lots of voters are undecided. Americans for Prosperity recently announced a “six-figure” ad buy here, hammering Shaheen on Obamacare and helping Brown. Republicans need to pick up six seats to take control of the Senate. They want New Hampshire to be one of them.

How well the “Obamacare’s Not Working” tour is itself working is hard to gauge. Visiting Secure Care Products, a medical tech company nestled in an office park not far from the statehouse, Brown the other day told workers to brace themselves for Obamacare fallout. But the response was tepid.